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Partly Cloudy County police sued by immigration rights activists
Lawsuit: NCPD violating state law when officers detain based on ICE warrants
The Hempstead-based Central American Refugee Center is suing the Nassau County Police Department over its policies dealing with immigrants, claiming that police are violating state law.
The immigration rights advocacy center, also known as CARECEN, filed a suit on Nov. 20 on behalf of a 26-year-old immigrant who has lived in Nassau County for 9 years, and fears she is at risk for detention and deportation. The woman is referred to as “Jane Doe” in the suit.
According to CARECEN, county police have a policy of contacting ICE after they determine the identity of a foreign-born arrestee, taking people into custody on the basis of ICE warrants and holding them on an ICE “detainer” — all of which they say runs contrary to New York State Law.
An ICE detainer is a request from the federal agency that law enforcement hold someone for up to 48 hours beyond when they would normally be released so that ICE can take them into custody.
According to CARECEN, Nassau police violate state law with this policy, because in New York, officers can only make warrantless arrests if there is reasonable cause to believe a crime is being or has been committed.
Being an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. is not a crime, according to the suit, and any arrest made on the basis of an ICE warrant or detainer, or any holding of an arrestee based on an ICE request, is an unlawful request.
“The policy puts the immigrant population that CARECEN serves in Nassau County at risk for unlawful arrests,” CARECEN’s attorney, Stefan Krieger, wrote, “because members of that community can be arrested or held in detention beyond the time they would otherwise have been released based on an ICE warrant or detainer.”
In their suit, CARECEN referenced the recent arrest of an undocumented immigrant who was stopped for failing to use a turn signal, arrested and turned over to ICE for deportation.
“Foreign-born residents choose not to report crimes or attend court appointments because they fear that any interaction with the police may result in their being transferred into ICE custody,” Krieger wrote. “Any foreign-born individual faces a risk from an otherwise routine police interaction in his or her daily activity, and, as a result of unlawful arrests by NCPD, Nassau County residents have been deported, and have been separated from their family and community.”
The suit seeks a declaratory judgment finding that the police department’s policy is unlawful.
Detective Liutenant Richard LeBrun, of the department’s public information office, issued a statement in response to the suit.
“Regardless of a person’s legal status, all persons in Nassau County are required to abide by the local, state and federal laws currently in effect,” Lebrun said. “The Nassau County Police Department will not inquire into any person’s immigration status unless they are arrested for a crime. This includes the immigration status of crime victims, witnesses, and anyone who calls the police seeking assistance.”
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in a similar case in July, according to court documents, that state and local police do not have authority under state law to arrest or hold undocumented immigrants solely based on an ICE warrant or detainer.
